Student Research Series: Archaeology at Dixie Plantation

The past few months have been spent digging and collecting in an area of Dixie Plantation that, according to a 1790 map, was a “settlement.” So, what are students Jeremy Miller, James Boast, Jessie Rabun, Sterling Carter, and Steven Paschal digging for? Artifacts to help determine if the area used to be a slave settlement. Eva Falls, CofC class of 2011, will be using the data collected at this site in her MA thesis at East Carolina University. Click on the image below to see a video of Eva explaining her research.

Students have been working in the field doing shovel-testing, surface collection of artifacts, and excavation units, as well as assisting in the lab washing, sorting, and initial curation of artifacts. They have recovered thousands of mid-18th to 20th century artifacts to date. So far, the artifacts strongly suggest that the site was heavily occupied from the late-18th to mid-19th century. Prehistoric artifacts suggest the site had also been used by Native American populations for well over a thousand years.

Archaeology minor Jeremy Miller has conducted some of his own documentary research on the Bailey family who owned Dixie from the 1850s to 1863. Stay tuned for a post about his project…